Global &
International Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara

Beigel and her collaborators set out to
challenge the common but false juxtaposition between pure,
original and autonomous academic knowledge produced in U.S. and
European universities, and politicized, dependent and vapid
knowledge produced in Latin American universities. Some scholars
have challenged the pure versus political knowledge dichotomy by
proposing new theoretical frameworks, as in the influential work
on ‘Mode 2’ knowledge production by Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott
and Michael Gibbons. Beigel and her co-authors, however, abandon
abstract ideals and instead examine the practice and politics of
Latin American academic communities. This approach proves to be
highly informative and methodologically rich: The authors —all
sociologists and social scientists at the National University of
Cuyo in Mendoza— present detailed information obtained through
interviews, archives and curriculum vitae. This information is
analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively to highlight the
agency of Latin American academics between the start of the Cold
War and the 1980s. As such, the book speaks directly to real and
perceived asymmetries in knowledge production in the Global
North and South.

Together, the chapters in this book
illustrate how state officials and academics in South America
shaped the reception of foreign aid, led regional academic
cooperation, developed idiosyncratic ideals and in some ways
survived the brutal military interventions of the 1970s. The
chapters of section I show how South American governments
re-shaped UNESCO’s efforts away from universal academic ideals
to narrower technical aid programs. Cold War politics motivated
foreign aid for universities, making foreign funding
controversial among local scholars. Nonetheless, efforts to
create new training schools absent direct foreign support often
floundered (chapter 4). Section II builds on this material by
looking beyond international diplomacy to different actors,
including the U.S. government’s Fulbright program, the Catholic
Church and Society of Jesus and university cooperative
agreements. A number of trends characterize this period: First,
at the start of the Cold War, Chile’s and Argentina’s
universities grew dramatically. Santiago de Chile in particular
grew from an intellectual and cultural backwater to a “center on
the periphery”, where well-funded and vibrant new centers like
FLACSO attracted exiled Brazilian social scientists and students
from across the region. Second, over time foreign aid became
less top-down and more bottom-up. For example, bottom-up
initiatives included regional exchanges and intra-university
cooperative agreements signed during that last decade (chapter
7).

A third trend sections I and II
anticipate is the unfortunate, divisive nature of such foreign
aid. This theme is picked up in section III, where its full
consequences become evident. Chapters 8 through 10 detail the
descent into left-wing radicalism, guerrilla warfare and state
violence that characterized Chile and Argentina in the 1970s.
Project Camelot, a U.S. spy operation that masqueraded as social
science research, was pivotal in breaking the fragile trust
between some local academics and U.S. collaborators and aid
agencies. Despite the participation of some important U.S.
scholars, Chilean social scientists refused to participate, and
U.S. research support in general became suspect (chapter 8). As
modernization gave way to radicalism, social scientists split:
While some did not think much of U.S. scientific support, others
saw it as evidence of the region’s dependence — a crutch that
would perpetuate dependence, not a bridge to an empowered future
(chapter 9).

Chapter 10 discusses the career
trajectories of dependence theorists from different disciplines.
Within the university, these academics behaved as scholars,
making their activism compatible with academic life and not vice
versa. Economists, who faced clearer career rewards and
milestones when compared to sociologists, had an easier time
leading this double life.

It is difficult to exaggerate the
dramatic changes to life, including academic life, that occurred
in Chile and Argentina after the military coups of 1973 and 1976
respectively. Section IV deals with some of the aftermath.
Thousands of students and faculty were killed, disappeared or
forced into exile. Some were saved, often by foreign
organizations working with local counterparts (chapters 11 and
13). Interestingly, scientific funding during Argentina’s
military dictatorship increased: Argentina’s science agency
(CONICET) received a budget increase proportional to the fall in
university funding (chapter 12). This funding maintained many
established research institutes, mostly in biomedical areas, and
spread throughout the country. It also established several
“spectral” social science research centers led by non-academics
with links to the military regime. Thus, Argentina’s social
sciences suffered both direct state violence and a symbolic
violence as social scientists were replaced by untrained, puppet
“academics”.

Perhaps because the volume has no
conclusion it does not reflect on four tragic ironies that cross
these historic events: First, foreign influences and resources
that helped radicalize many students and academics later saved
many after the military take-over. Second, related to this, the
regionalization and internationalization these foreign exchanges
facilitated were sources of strength for universities and
academic communities. Why else would the military governments
have stamped out such exchanges as thoroughly as they did?

Third, scientific research and
creativity — including “anti-academicism” in Argentina —
flourished at universities enjoying expanding resources and
student access. As chronicled in this volume, in the 1960s a
highly educated generation of Argentineans turned against the
schools and universities that trained them. Over the past few
years, the same phenomenon has been observed in Chile: The first
generation of Chileans to enjoy widespread access to education,
including higher education, has become the harshest critic of
academic life in Chile today.

Fourth and most tragically, one of Latin
America’s greatest scholarly contributions to the world —
dependency theory — was both evidence of the region’s
intellectual originality and locals’ lived experiences of
dependency. Dependency theory helped fuel suspicions of foreign
funding, internationalization and university expansion.
Together, these observations point to still unresolved questions
about academia in Latin America: To what level should
governments fund science given other pressing social needs? Does
academics’ privilege relative to many of the populations they
study weaken the validity of their work or its social
legitimacy? Should university access be subsidized, or does this
only benefit the comparatively well-off? And why have these
questions driven a certain “anti-academicism” in Latin America,
when they apply also to academic life elsewhere? As scholars, we
have an opportunity (perhaps a duty?) to reflect on questions
like these that speak directly to how educational opportunities
(re)produce social inequality.

Beigel’s analysis is strongest in her
critique of “international-trade based metaphors” like an
international division of scientific labor or export-import
models of science and knowledge production. These accounts erase
local agency, imply that autonomy outside the center is
logically impossible and cannot account for observed increases
in scientific productivity in such peripheral places like China,
India or Brazil (18-19). Beigel develops Chilean and Argentinean
academics’ agency using Bourdieu’s forms of capital in their
professionalization. Two shortcomings, however, need to be
pointed out: First, the volume focuses almost entirely on Chile
and Argentina, making the claim to be speaking about all of
Latin America misleading. The absence of other countries should
be justified or the scope of the volume narrowed. Second, the
focus on Bourdieu’s homo academicus shifts attention away from
universities and their context. Beigel seems to justify this by
arguing that universities alone did not drive the radicalism of
the 1960s and 1970s (10). Nonetheless, at times the analysis
feels too concerned with events within university walls, as if
these existed independently of the convulsed society outside.
Despite these shortcomings, this book will be of interest to
scholars of Latin American politics in the 1960s and of
university politics around the world.